There are echoes here of the herd instincts let loose by the program trading of 1987, or the dotcom mania of the recent equity bubble.

ECONOMIST: Too clever by half

For one thing, the stock market bubble that blew apart a decade ago reflected widespread mania for tech stocks generally and not just Internet stocks specifically.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Furthermore, I have never seen a bull market end without the mania phase (remember during the tech bubble when your favorite plumber became a day trader, or in 2005 in the midst of the housing bubble when your dog walker became a real estate agent?).

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The Busang affair was not, first of all, a speculative frenzy such as the Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century or the South Sea Bubble of the 18th.

ECONOMIST: All that glisters . . .

All this will reignite a debate about whether the mania for social-networking sites is inflating another internet bubble.

ECONOMIST: Leaders

But this entire regulatory system broke down when the rating agencies were seduced into going along with the fashionable, subprime mortgage mania, failing to see through the fog of the housing bubble, which was their job.

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The mania merely resettled up here, off 218th Street, in a bubble on the Harlem River.

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Such attributes made it stodgy-looking in the Internet mania of the late 1990s but enabled it to breeze by go-go shop Janus when the bubble burst.

FORBES: Price Is Right

Given these factors and the ongoing pain of the housing bubble burst, one would think that there would be a reluctance to participate in what appears to be yet another mania.

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